Mathematics
Maximum Likelihood Estimation and Its Properties
Quick fact
Maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is the method behind many familiar statistical tools, including linear regression: the least squares line is exactly the MLE for the slope and intercept when errors are normally distributed.
Why this is interesting
Imagine you have a coin that lands heads 7 times out of 10—what probability would you assign to landing heads? Maximum likelihood estimation gives you a principled way to choose that number.